Concentration

ARTICLES ABOUT CONCENTRATION BY DATE - PAGE 3

Fully vested into his 10th year in the NFL, Ed Reed is still waiting for his first Super Bowl title. But the Ravens free safety isn't concerning himself about whether an 11th season is on the horizon. “I'm taking this one game at a time, taking this in stride,” he said Thursday. “The only thing I'm worrying about right now is this game, this year.” Reduced productivity and injuries have added more fire to the speculation that Reed's decision could depend on the team's results in the postseason.

Longtime baseball man Ray Poitevint, announced Monday as the Orioles' executive director of international baseball, will be in charge of the organization's scouting efforts in Asia. The Orioles have spent this offseason tapping into the market, signing Japanese left-hander Tsuyoshi Wada and Taiwanesse lefty Wei-Yin Chen to multiyear major league deals as well as signing Korean pitcher Eun-Chul Choi to a minor league deal. Poitevint said the Orioles aren't done this offseason.

Jimmy Patsos was in his first season at Loyola when Pat Kennedy, then entering his second year at Towson and coming off a 5-24 season, proclaimed the Tigers to be Baltimore's college basketball team. Other local coaches might have chuckled at Kennedy's remark, but Patsos, raised near the chips on the shoulders of Gary Williams, took it as a personal challenge. "The last I looked," Patsos said at the time, " we're in Baltimore. " But deep down, Patsos knew that Loyola could have been on Mars when it came to Baltimore players.

Whether it was on my "rural tour" of states throughout the country or at workshops with the Department of Justice to discuss competition in agriculture, time and again, livestock and poultry producers have emphasized the need for a fair and competitive industry and workable, common-sense rules to address bad actors. The U.S. Department of Agriculture recently finalized a rule to implement the 2008 Farm Bill to help remedy some of these concerns. In the last 30 years, the livestock and poultry marketplace has not only become more concentrated but also more vertically integrated.

There are times when coach Mark Turgeon is a portrait of anguish on the Maryland sideline. He'll stamp his feet. He'll crouch in front of the bench and lower his head between his legs. He'll gaze up at the rafters, as if searching for inspiration. Fans might imagine that Turgeon's suffering is directly tied to losing games, but it's more complicated than that. Strange as may seem, Turgeon — the ultra-competitive former Kansas point guard who once said, "I'd fight anybody that got in my way" — says winning should not be dominating his thoughts, nor those of his young, depth-challenged team.

Georges I. Selzer, who cheated death twice while a concentration camp prisoner and who after World War II became a Baltimore jeweler, died Oct. 17 of heart failure at the Edenwald retirement community in Towson. The former longtime Lutherville resident was 99. Mr. Selzer, who was born, raised and educated in St. Gallen, Switzerland, settled in France in 1927, when he became an apprentice jeweler. When the Nazis seized power, Mr. Selzer's father told him he was not to disguise his Jewishness.

As the four recently released Ravens walk out of team headquarters for perhaps the final time this week, they open the door for the team's free-agent priority. The Ravens struck a deal with Marshal Yanda late Tuesday afternoon, agreeing to terms with the coveted offensive lineman on a multi-year deal that is believed to average a little more than $6 million per season. According to SI.com, Yanda agreed to five-year, $32 million deal that includes $10 million signing bonus. He will receive $21 million in first three seasons.

Bracing for the loss of a steady paycheck is becoming something of a routine for Frank Silberstein. A statistician for the U.S. Census Bureau and a union steward for the American Federation of Government Employees, Silberstein said the pitched battle in Washington over whether to raise the nation's $14.3 trillion debt ceiling has — for the second time this year — put federal workers in Maryland on edge about whether they'll still have a job...

The Maryland Department of the Environment has issued a Code Orange air quality alert Tuesday for the Baltimore metropolitan area. A Code Orange alert means that air pollution concentrations within the region may become unhealthy for certain groups, including children, people suffering from asthma and lung diseases, and the elderly. In Howard County, health officer Peter Beilenson issued an Extreme Heat Alert for Tuesday, noting that high temperatures and humidity levels will make the heat outside feel 100 degrees or hotter.